City prosecutors last Wednesday said it was not illegal to perform naked yoga in the city -- even at the crowded tourist destination of Fisherman's Wharf.

"Simply being naked on the street is not a crime in San Francisco," said Debbie Mesloh, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Prosecutors dropped charges against a limber nudist, known locally as the "Naked Yoga Guy," who made a habit of striking yoga poses in the buff in order to promote a book and his lifestyle.

The Naked Yoga Guy, whose name is George Monty Davis, had stripped to stretch nearby Fisherman's Wharf, prompting a public complaint. But prosecutors decided they had a weak public nuisance case against him because local laws do not bar public nudity.

The city's fireworks permit still allows performer Tina Miser to shoot her husband, Brian Miser, out of a cannon. But the permit won't allow her to douse him with lighter fluid before she sends him sailing across the arena. Commissioners are worried that a flaming man being shot out of a cannon will send kids the wrong message on the eve of Fire Prevention Week.

technology and drugs aren't enough to help some patients with wounds that don't heal properly. Dead flesh is often difficult and painful to remove, and doctors sometimes can't help but take away healthy skin -- including scar tissue -- in the process. Leaving the flesh there isn't a good option, either. "The problem is that it slows sound healing, Your body expends energy to separate and eject the dead tissue which could be put toward building new scar tissue and healing the wound."

Enter the maggots, which are happy to gorge themselves, usually without doing much damage unless they slip into healthy tissue. They also kill bacteria, which can be a bonus in patients infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics.

Dr. Ronald Sherman and his wife now send shipments of 250 to 500 disinfected maggots -- $70 plus shipping -- to as many as 35 doctors a week.

Wednesday, 29 September 2004

Like all people of conscience, we in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are deeply concerned about the use of our tax dollars to support the violent, repressive and racist regime in Israel.

As queers, we are part of an international movement for human rights that encompasses the movement for Palestinian liberation, and all other liberation movements. We are also part of the growing international movement seeking active ways to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine.

We have at times had to struggle for inclusion in the Palestinian solidarity movement, because there were some individuals and groups who objected to our presence.

We strongly believe that any struggle for liberation has to include queer liberation, because queers are part of all oppressed groups.

archive...

jews against zionism"We call upon our leaders in Washington to disassociate the actions of the Zionist state from traditional Judaism by no longer referring to Israel as the Jewish State but as the Zionist State and to speak out against the Zionist actions which promote anti-Semitism."

They faced a hostile press and public - some reports say the first traffic police risked being run down and horse-whipped by irate coachmen.

After Pc Robert Culley was stabbed to death at a riot in Holborn in 1833 a coroner's jury returned a verdict of "justifiable homicide".

the new force managed to recruit about 1,000 constables who had to be "of good character", able to read and write and be physically fit.

"They were known as working class traitors, the working classes thought they would be sneering at them and the upper classes and businessmen didn't want them poking their noses in," said Met officer Maggie Bird, who works in the force's archives office. "There were committees set up to disband the new police and there were riots in the streets."

"The people who set the Met up were very careful to pronounce that before they arrived there was terror, chaos and death on the streets of London, " said Dr Chris Williams, a history lecturer at the Open University. "But there has been lots of research and the persistent answer is that is not the case." "[Policing] was patchy and locally controlled - the Met was about centralising, a 'one size fits all' force across London. In some places it [policing] got better, in some places it got worse."

In his eyewitness account of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," author William Shirer, who lived in Nazi Germany throughout most of the 1930s, described a phenomenon that will, in 2004, seem disturbingly familiar to Americans who dissent from the policies of the Bush regime aswell as to all of us who exist inside the narrowcast of contemporary mainstream media.

"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state," Shirer wrote. "Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers . . . and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings.

It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it."

Shirer then recounted how, in conversations with his German friends and strangers he would meet in cafes and beer halls, "I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers.

"Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."

archive...

"The relationship between publicity and democracy is not essentially corrupt. The free circulation of ideas and debate is critical to the maintenance of an aware public. (...) Publicity becomes an impediment to democracy, however, when the circulation of ideas is governed by enormous concentrations of wealth that have, as their underlying purpose, the perpetuation of their own power. When this is the case - as is too often true today - the ideal of civic participation gives way to a continual sideshow, a masquerade of democracy calculated to pique the public's emotions. In regard to a more democratic future, then, ways of enhancing the circulation of ideas - regardless of economic circumstance - need to be developed."

New doubts over Dr David KellyWith the Hutton suicide ruling now called into serious question by experts from across the medical spectrum, there must now be a cast-iron case for resuming a full inquest into Dr Kelly's death.

During the fight for Jewish statehood, extremist military groups sometimes resorted to the use of terrorist tactics. One such instance occurred in 1948 when members of the Jewish underground organization LEHI (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) killed UN Peace Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte to protest his diplomatic efforts to modify the Palestine partition plan.

Yitzhak Shamir reputedly played a role in planning the assassination; however, he was never tried and went on to become Prime Minister of Israel.

the people in Sabra and Shatila had been promised they'd be protected from their enemies. It was a deal brokered by America with the Israeli's and the beleaguered Lebanese government.

at the time Sharon was Minister of Defence in touch with the field commanders. Sharon actually was present there in Beirut, he met with the Phalange (Lebanese Christian militia) leadership and he gave the directions and orders that resulted in the Phalange entering the camps in September.

"In the camps people were dead or dying. No one was screaming, no one was talking. They were all dead or about to be dead. It was very clear to see that they were not shot to death, that they were tortured." ....EMMANUEL ROSEN: Journalist for Israeli Defence Force, 1982

KEANE: "In the rubble were children who'd been scalped, young men who'd been castrated."

Could Ariel Sharon have been in any doubt about what would have happened if you sent the Phalangists into an undefended Palestinian refugee camp?

MORRIS DRAPER US Special Envoy to the Middle East, 1982: "Well you'd have to be appallingly ignorant. I mean I suppose if you came down from the moon that day you might not predict it."

besides, Israeli tanks and troops had closely surrounded the camps to prevent any of the Palestinians from escaping.

Ariel Sharon went on to become Prime Minister of Israel. Ariel Sharon said recently he regretted the tragedy of Sabra and Shatila, but asked if he would apologise he replied "To apologise for what?"

3... Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made one of the frankest statements yet about the 9/11 attack: he said it was “good for Israel.”

Republican friends, I bring wonderful news. As one of my minions types this, Iraq is truly being made in America's image. Regrettably, it happens to be the image that the rest of the world has of us, not the product of our own, more idolatrous gaze into the mirror.

Most Iraqis, I am told, believe that they are "better off" becoming violently ill from drinking filthy water while dodging bullets under the elusive promise of shifting democracy and the inevitable specter of bloody civil war than they were being victimized by the clean water and electricity Saddam Hussein ruthlessly used to curry favor.

In striving to become more typically American, Baghdad has managed to make real a pandemic violence that readers of Le Monde only imagine exists in New York City. Mr. Bush is certain to point this out as yet one more example of the obsequious Iraqis emulating us with bracing verve.

But, as President Bush might say, lots of death is just one barometer of success. In its zeal to emulate the country that thoughtfully cut its electricity bills by turning off the power and relandscaped with JDAM smart bombs (after all, a phoenix can only rise if someone selflessly takes time out of his day to torch its nest), Iraq is now determined to make its brand of democracy less Greek, more American. Clearly after careful study of Florida in 2000, Iraq's interim Prime Minister (and impish coconspirator in Mr. Bush's amusing parlor game wherein the President throws his speechwriter's voice) Ayad Allawi assured America last week that Iraqi elections will not be perfect........

Using video cameras to record films in cinemas would become a federal crime punishable by up to six years in prison under a proposed US bill. Passed on Tuesday by the US House of Representatives, the Senate is expected to consider the proposal next week.

The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act would also make it easier to prosecute internet users who illegally distribute music and copyrighted works blah blah blah....

Research body Informa predicted 8.5bn visits to the cinema would be recorded this year, up from 8.2bn in 2003. The global average ticket price is $2.68 (£1.48), reflecting low charges in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Takings are expected to rise 7% to $22.8bn (£12.6bn) in 2004, Informa predicted. Informa predicted muted annual growth until 2010, as the number of cinema multiplexes reaches saturation point. The US accounts for 44% of all global box office takings. Global box office revenues are forecast to rise to $25.6bn (£14bn) by 2010, nearly double the 1995 total.

plus.... “The only thing Hollywood likes more than a good movie is a good deal,” David Robb explains, that to keep the Pentagon happy some Hollywood producers have been known to turn villains into heroes, remove central characters, change politically sensitive settings, or add military rescues to movies that require none. There are no bad guys in the military. No fraternization between officers and enlisted troops. No drinking or drugs. No struggles against bigotry. The military and the president can’t look bad. In exchange, they get inexpensive access to the military locations, vehicles, troops and gear they need to make their movies.

After the film is completed, you have to prescreen the film for the Pentagon brass. So before it’s shown to the public, you have to show your movie to the generals and admirals, which I think any American should find objectionable -- that their movies are being prescreened by the military. "They’re much less interested in reality and accuracy than they are in positive images. They often try to change historical facts that are negative."

Tuesday, 28 September 2004

n55 ..... SNAIL SHELL SYSTEMThe SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM is a low cost system that enables persons to move around, change their whereabouts and live in various environments. One unit supplies space for one person. It is mobile both on land and water. One person can move it slowly, either by pushing it like a wheel, walking inside it or on top of it.

On water it can be rowed, moved by a kite or hooked up to a vessel, for example, a ferry. The unit rests on one flat side and can be anchored in lakes, rivers, harbours or at sea. On land, it can be placed in city spaces, fields, forests etc.

The SNAIL SHELL SYSTEM takes up very little space and can easily be placed in a discreet way. It can be buried in the ground, exposing only the entrance. It can also function as a comfortable space inside existing buildings.

Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire

According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries

but the 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.

Some of these bases are so gigantic they require as many as nine internal bus routes for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around inside the earthen berms and concertina wire. That's the case at Camp Anaconda, headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, whose job is to police some 1,500 square miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from Samarra to Taji. Anaconda occupies 25 square kilometers and will ultimately house as many as 20,000 troops.

countries mentioned as sites for new bases, “forward operating sites,” sometimes called “lily pad” bases. or what Colin Powell calls our new "family of bases", include: Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; - Pakistan (where we already have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria ; and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone . The models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are the string of bases built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

N55 SPACEFRAMEThe N55 SPACEFRAME is a low-cost, movable lightweight construction that can easily be transformed. It is dimensioned as a living unit for 3-4 persons and demands practically no maintenance. The construction can be erected by anybody in a short time.

The N55 SPACEFRAME is configured as a truncated tetrahedron with an indoor ground floor of approx. 20 m'. According to needs and economy, the size and configuration may be changed, and extra floors and rooms may be included: it is easy to add to the construction in stages.

The entire unit is constructed from small lightweight components which all can be handled without the use of cranes or other heavy machinery. All components are materially minimised, have a low degree of manufacturing and are produced by a few simple machines, which anybody can operate. When stacked, the components take up very little space. The construction is assembled by hand. It can be erected directly onto the ground, since a cast foundation is not necessary. The structure can be dismantled and rebuilt many times over without damaging any of the components. The construction can be moved either fully assembled, or partly dismantled.

Francis Biddle, once remarked that the Constitution "has not greatly bothered any wartime president."

during World War II FDR rounded up of over 100,000 ethnic Japanese Americans and sent them to what FDR himself called "concentration camps."

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus, which enabled him to detain thousands of rebels and subversives without access to judges. the tens of thousands of Northern citizens who were imprisoned without due process by the Lincoln administration (as many as 38,000 by one estimate in the Columbia Law Journal) were overwhelmingly plain citizens from all walks of life who simply expressed doubt over the administration’s unconstitutional and despotic policies, including the shutting down of more than 300 opposition newspapers and the mass arrest of political dissenters by the military. Tens of thousands of Northern political prisoners spent months in a series of gulags, such as Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor, which came to be known as "the American Bastille."

The Lincoln administration cast a very wide net in rounding up any and all political opponents in the Northern states. Anyone overheard questioning virtually anything the administration had done, let alone publishing critical articles or editorials in newspapers, could land in prison without any due process. In fact, Lincoln himself even argued that those who simply remained silent and did not actively support his administration should also be subject to imprisonment. In his own words:

"The man who stands by and says nothing when the peril of his Government is discussed cannot be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy; much more if he talks ambiguously – talks for his country with "buts" and "ifs" and "ands." (Collected Works of Lincoln, vol. 6, pp. 264–265.)

As Dean Sprague writes in 'Freedom Under Lincoln' (p. 178): "When an editor of a newspaper wished to attack a Peace man [i.e., a critic of the Lincoln administration] he would suggest him as a candidate for Fort Lafayette. When a Union man heard a Peace speech, he knew it was not necessary to interfere. He would simply pass by with the remark that the speaker had better watch out or he would end up in Fort Lafayette." That, presumably, would intimidate the peace advocate sufficiently to shut him up for good.

n55 ..... The SUSPENDED PLATFORMThe SUSPENDED PLATFORM is a modular, lightweight and low-cost system that enables persons to live in for example a forest, in mountains, or between buildings. It uses existing structures to carry its load.

Three persons can easily transport a basic living version for up to four persons. It could be installed in a short time, though this will depend on the conditions of the site. The system can easily be extended to support more persons and functions.

It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned and tortured there.

"it exists to make torture possible - a particular kind of torture that creates progressive states of dread, dependency, debility," says Manal Hazzan, a human rights lawyer who helped expose the prison's existence. "The law gives the army enough authority already to hide prisoners, so why do they need a secret facility?"

Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access. One leftwing MP, Zahava Gal-On, describes Facility 1391 as "one of the signs of totalitarian regimes and of the third world". The Israeli government declines to discuss the secret prison other than to issue a standard response: "Facility 1391 is situated on a secret military base. The base is used by the security services for various classified activities and thus its location is kept confidential."

But it is not just human rights lawyers and leftwing MPs who have a problem. Ami Ayalon is a former head of Israel's intelligence service, the Shin Bet. He was told about 1391 but says he refused to have anything to do with it. "I knew there was a facility not under the responsibility of the Shin Bet, but under the responsibility of the military. I didn't think then, and I don't think today, that such an institution should exist in a democracy," he says.

The Killmoulis is a very ugly creature who dwells in mills. He has an enormous nose but no mouth. He probably eats by stuffing food through his nostrils. A Killmoulis is a hard worker and a great help to a miller, but with his tricks he is sometimes more a nuisance than a help.

the new phenomenon of "bespoke" or "DIY" censorship as practiced by companies such as ClearPlay and Trilogy Studios. ClearPlay will mute, bleep, skip and jump its way through the "horrid and naughty bits" in any DVD you want altered, while Trilogy's MovieMask software digitally alters your DVD to accord with your own comfort level. You can reduce or remove entirely all sex, violence or language. You can expunge any "vain reference to the deity" or "strong profanity". You can cut all the bloodshed out of Saving Private Ryan without any dealings with, or permission from, Steven Spielberg or Dreamworks, who are naturally incensed.

Sunday, 26 September 2004

The man arrested last week for allegedly trying to kill President Vladimir Putin with a car bomb was interrogated by 150 police officers before he died.

Police said he died of a heart attack. The Observer can reveal that the body of Alexander Pumane, 38, from St Petersburg, was so badly beaten that his relatives were unable to identify him.

Pumane was arrested at 1am last Saturday after he parked a Lada near the foreign ministry. Police found explosives, two anti-personnel mines and a container of unidentified liquid in the car.

Pumane, whom officials insisted was under the influence of drugs, was questioned for three hours.

The Izvestiya newspaper said he was interrogated by up to 150 people. Pumane said he had been paid $1,000 (£550) - but refused to say by whom - to drive two cars to Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a road used daily by the presidential limousine.

After hours in custody, Pumane was rushed to hospital, and by 8.30am he was dead.

His ex-wife Natalia said: 'I was told about his death on Saturday and then invited to the prosecutor's office in St Petersburg. They told me Alexander was brought to hospital in a state of drug intoxication and with bruising over all the body.'

The match formed by synchronizing a movie with an unrelated music album, to produce a new experience unintended by either work.

Early in the history of film, it was discovered that the music that a piece of visual imagery is displayed with has a powerful influence on how it is perceived and received by the human mind. Films with highly emotional, majestic scores were found to have a greater emotional impact on their audience than similar scenes with no music, or even silence. thus hollywood's compulsion to continuously manipulate the audience via annoying cliche music.

octopii have chromataphores all over the exterior of their bodies. Chromataphores are cells that can change color. octopii change colors in a very large repatoire of stripes, dots, blushes, travelling shades and tonal shifts because this is for them a channel of linguistic communication. In other words they don't transduce their linguistic intentionality into small mouth noises like we do. Small mouth noises which then move as sound across space in the form of vibrations of the air. Rather, they actually change their appearance in accordance with their linguistic intent.

What this boils down to is they physically become their meaning, and one octopus observing another is watching the unfolding of internalized neurological states within the organism being reflected in color changes on the surface of the skin. Now these octopii not only can change their color because their soft-bodied creatures. They can also change the texture of their surface from smooth to rugose and folded. They can also, because they're soft-bodied, fold and unfold and reveal and conceal, very rapidly, different parts of their body. So they're capable of a visual dance of communication that is an extremely dense kind of visual signal.

in the so-called benthic (sp) octopii, the species that have evolved in very deep water where very little light reaches, they have evolved light-emitting phosphorescent organs, some of them with membranes like eyelids over them, so that even in the darkness of the abyssal depth of the ocean they can carry out this dance of light, self-enfoldment, color change and surface texture which is their linguistic style. In fact the only way an octopus can experience a private thought is to release a cloud of ink into the water into which it can retreat briefly and hide its mental nakedness from its followers.
(Ordinary Language, Visible Language and Virtual Reality by Terence McKenna)

Saturday, 25 September 2004

Crude dudesNestled into the heart of the area of heaviest oil concentration in the world is Iraq. Not only does Iraq have vast quantities of easily accessible oil, but its oil is almost untouched. "Think of Iraq as virgin territory .... This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in currently .... It is the superstar of the future," says Gheit, "That's why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth." .......

Saddam's lawyer Giovanni di Stefano told Denmark's B.T. newspaper that Saddam decided during one of their discussions that he would declare his candidacy for the elections. there was no law that prevented Saddam from appearing on the ballot.

Saddam's lawyer defends that the ambiguity in Iraq will favor Saddam at the polls. Stefano remarked that a recent Gallup poll indicates that 42 percent of the Iraqi people want their former leader back.

The C.I.A. recruited Dr. Allawi in 1992. According to former CIA officers, Allawi's INA organised terrorist attacks in Iraq between 1992 and 1995, allegedly including the bombing of a cinema and a school bus that killed school children. This campaign never posed a threat to Saddam Hussein's rule, but was designed to test INA's capability to effect regime change. Another former intelligence officer who was involved in Iraqi affairs recalled that the bombings "were an option we considered and used."

An American intelligence officer who worked with Dr. Allawi in the early 1990's noted that "no one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," adding, "I don't think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."

Dr. Allawi is not believed to have ever spoken in public about the bombing campaign. But one Iraqi National Accord officer did. In 1996, Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National Accord and as being based in Sulaimaniya, in northern Iraq, recorded a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained that he was being shortchanged money and supplies. Two former intelligence officers confirmed the existence of the videotape.

Mr. Khadami said that "we blew up a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000" but got only $1,000, according to an account in the British newspaper The Independent in 1997. The newspaper had obtained a copy of the tape.

Beginning in 2003, Allawi paid prominent Washington lobbyists and New York publicity agents more than $300,000 to give him access to Washington policy-makers and journalists.

Allawi channelled the report from an Iraqi officer claiming that Iraq could deploy its supposed weapons of mass destruction within "45 minutes" to British Intelligence. An Allawi spokesman admitted in January 2004 that the claim was a "crock of shit."
(via Baghdad Burning)

Iyad Allawi, the "prime minister" appointed and approved by Iraq's American management, didn't wait even a month after the "handover" to establish a "Higher Media Commission" to red line the press.

Among the restrictions? Any "unwarranted criticism'' of the aforementioned "prime minister."

And to think that one of the much-ballyhooed acts by U.S. proconsul L. Paul Bremer III, the guy who handed over Iraq's "sovereignty" to the prime minister June 28 before sneaking out of Baghdad, was to shut down Saddam Hussein's dreaded information ministry.

Iran's Foreign Minister at the United Nations Friday described the United States as extremist and said its use of unbridled militarism causes terrorism.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Kamal Kharrazi said, The prevailing world realities illustrate that unbridled militarism and blind terrorism are mutually reinforcing, giving the attack against Iraq as an example.
(via what really happened)

archive.....

one week after 9/11, Richard Aboulafia, senior military analyst with the aerospace and defence consultancy Teal Group, said the attacks were "all good things for the defence industry".

the United States remains the world's leader in arms sales.

One third of countries spend more on the military than they do on health-care services.

Nearly half (42 per cent) of countries with the highest defence burden rank among the lowest in human development.

"Many journalists are holed up behind cement barricades, driving around in armored vehicles, noting only the most grotesque or obvious activities. Others arrive in Iraq having been told what to write about and thus are closed off to much of what is happening around them. Others come with good intentions but wind up smoking hash or drinking to beat back the stress, ultimately letting their own fears creep into their stories."

Israeli army bulldozers have torn down the homes of more than 200 Palestinians in the Gaza refugee camp of Khan Yunis, United Nations aid officials say.

The BBC's Alan Johnston, in Gaza City, says it is not possible for journalists to visit the scene and see for themselves because the Israelis have shut the checkpoint on the road to Khan Yunis.

The Gaza Strip has been occupied by Israel since it captured the territory from Egyptian control in the 1967 war.

Under the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, Israel handed over control of about 80% of the territory to the Palestinian Authority to administer. Israel retained control over 20% of the territory, as well as the border crossings.

Since the intifada began in autumn 2000, the Israeli army has made repeated incursions into Gaza and imposed numerous restrictions on its 1.3m inhabitants.

Palestinian militants have repeatedly attacked the 8,000 Israeli settlers living in Gaza who take up a third of the land and have launched numerous rocket attacks into Israel.

The palestinian population has meanwhile been hit by crippling economic, social and developmental crises, with an estimated one-third of workers unemployed, and almost two-thirds living below the poverty line, according to the International Labour Organisation.

Sameeh and the other civilian were detained by the soldiers and were forced – in what Israeli soldiers call 'entertainment' – to choose one from three paper notes inside a box. The paper notes carry different punishment ways for the civilians, including breaking hands, legs and drinking from bottles filled with the soldiers' urine.

He told the newspaper that when he refused to take part in this 'entertainment', the soldiers attacked him and sprayed his face with one of the urine bottles. "After that I couldn't bear any longer, so I pushed the soldier away, then all six of them jumped me and pointed their M- 16 assault rifles at me, ordering me to drink the urine or be shot dead."

Sameeh added that he was forced to drink the urine until he fell unconscious. He was found by other civilians near the checkpoint, and was transferred to the Abu Dees clinic, where his stomach was emptied of the urine, and he was then moved to Beit Jala Hospital, where he remained there until Monday.

DALLAS -- A teacher is on paid administrative leave after sending a first-grader home with shit in his backpack because the boy went to the bathroom on the classroom floor.

The teacher apparently was frustrated with the 6-year-old student's actions so wrapped up the waste and sent it home with the boy Tuesday along with a note, Dallas school district spokesman Donald Claxton said.

Using technology similar to that found in a conventional microwave oven, the beam rapidly heats water molecules in the skin to cause intolerable pain and a burning sensation. The invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than a millimetre. As soon as the target moves out of the beam's path, the pain disappears.

"The skin gets extremely hot, and people can't stand the pain, so they have to move - and move in the way we want them to," said Col Wade Hall of the Office of Force Transformation, a body formed in November 2001 to promote rapid improvement across all of the American armed services.
(via linkswarm)

University of Washington scientists plan to infect monkeys with a killer flu virus grown from tissue exhumed from victims of the 1918 epidemic.

They hope the insight they gain will unravel the mystery of why tens of millions of people worldwide died from the virulent flu strain and lead to development of better vaccines and drugs that may save lives in the future.

"This was the most deadly infectious disease in the history of mankind, killing at least 40 million people," said Dr. Michael Katze, a UW microbiologist and principal investigator for the local arm of the project.

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

The nations of the Allied side of World War I called it the "Spanish Flu". This was mainly because the pandemic received greater press attention in Spain than in the rest of the world, because Spain was not involved in the war and there was no wartime censorship. In Spain it was called "The French Flu". The desease first appeared inside a US Army Base, Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas. but Spain did have one of the worst early outbreaks of the disease, with some 8 million people infected in May of 1918.

Many of the worst outbreaks of the "Flu" were among soldiers, both at the front lines and in camps far away. Severe outbreaks often required hospitalization and even with the best of care often killing one third of those infected. The strain was unusual in commonly killing many young and healthy victims, as opposed to more common influenzas which caused the bulk of their mortality among the old and infirm. People without symptoms could be struck suddenly and be rendered too feeble to walk within hours; many would die the next day. Symptoms included a blue tint to the face and coughing up blood.

Global morbidity from the influenza was estimated at 2.5% of the population, with some 20% of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent. The disease spread across the world killing twenty-five million in the course of six months; some estimates put the total of those killed world-wide at over twice that number, possibly as high as 70 million. An estimated 17 million died in India alone, with a morbidity of about 5% of the population. About 28% of the population of the USA suffered from the disease, and some 500,000 died from it. 200,000 were killed in Britain.

a speech by Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, delivered to the German people almost 65 years ago....

"I ask, which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower, and yes, the backbone to best protect us?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight.

There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust our future and that man's name is Adolph Hitler.

There are some crazy men who would kill us if they could. So Adolph Hitler has told us: 'All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.'

But where is the national unity in this country when we need it most?

Now, while young Germans are dying in the mud in Czechoslovakia and the mountains of Poland, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Social Democrats manic obsession to bring down our Fuhrer.

What has happened to the nation I've spent my life working in?

I can remember when Social Democrats believed that it was the duty of Germany to fight for freedom over tyranny.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Germans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Social Democratic leaders see Germany as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes me madder than someone calling German troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the Czechs, Poles, Frenchmen, and Belgians who have been freed because Adolph Hitler led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the millions of men, women, and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to the Balkans, because Adolph Hitler built a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the German soldier. And our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad; they preserve it for us here at home.

Right now, the world just cannot afford an indecisive Germany. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger, our Fuhrer has had the courage to stand up. And I am proud to stand up with him.

Invaders always say that they come as liberators"a propaganda poster from World War II, depicts a strapping young SS officer holding a smiling local kid in his arms. "Trust the German soldier," the caption exhorts citizens of occupied France.

But when liberation came in 1945, Frenchmen who had obeyed that poster were shot as collaborators.

the men and women who received medals and pensions were those who resisted,, they were the "terrorists" who shot German soldiers, cut phone lines and bombed trains.

Invaders always say that they come as liberators, but it's almost never true. Whether you live in Paris or Baghdad or New York, you're expected to know that, and to act accordingly."

plus... Iraq Far graver than VietnamMost senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale. and General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

dogs can smell cancerDogs can sniff out cancer, a study shows today, resolving several years of anecdote and speculation by doctors on the question.

plus...

Silicon sensors give clues to a person's underlying healthDoctors have long known that trace elements in breath can give clues to a person's underlying health. The sensors are about 1 mm square and can be tuned to react to many different gases. The sensors can spot the target gas often when it is present in tiny quantities.

Thursday, 23 September 2004

Around death and the dead, cultures put in place diverse restrictions and practices associated with clothing, food and ritual. This website explores what happens to us when we die and the different ways we deal with death.

"It was so scary, all those Ronald McDonalds staring at us in our headlights. It gave us a very, very funny feeling. If you hadn’t seen them with your own eyes, you wouldn’t believe it,"

He estimates there were 500 of those 14-inch Ronald McDonald dolls, in perfect formations, spaced about two or three feet apart in the center of six roads in the court that houses about 150 mobile homes.
(via the obscure store)

Me: “Excuse me, but do you mind keeping your voice down, I am trying to read.”

Preacher Lady: (screams) “I got to testify.”

Preacher lady hitches up her skirts and tells me that I am going to hell for interrupting you-know-who’s word. Two or three OTHER Christian ladies on the train start shouting at me and discussing my prospects as the Devil’s prison bitch. The last straw was a 50 something red faced man in a suit slamming his Bible towards my face.

There was only one thing I could do.

Me: “If you all don’t lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes.”

The other straphangers look at me with stony faces.

I begin to sing.
“Its very clear, our love is here to stay. Not for a year, but forever and a day…....”read on(via j-walk blog)

In a poll released yesterday by the American Jewish Committee, Jewish voters preferred John Kerry to Mr Bush by a margin of nearly three to one: 69% to 24%.

David Harris, director of the American Jewish Committee, said: "Most American Jews tend towards the liberal side of the political equation, and therefore instinctively lean towards the Democratic candidate, and this year may be no exception, despite a president with a strong track record on US-Israeli relations, and who is waging a war on radical Islamic terrorism."

This is the second poll to confound Republican hopes: in a survey by the Democratic pollsters Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner for the National Jewish Democratic Council, Mr Kerry had 75% support and Mr Bush 22%.

The Bush administration has been the most unabashedly supportive of Israel, culminating in Mr Sharon's visit to Washington last April, when Mr Bush broke with 30 years of diplomatic tradition by endorsing his Gaza withdrawal plan.

But although Jews may appreciate Mr Bush's support for Israel, they balk at the open religiosity of his administration, and his party's moral crusading on issues such as gay marriage, stem cell research, and abortion.

Accompanied by the father of detainee Moazzam Begg, who has been kept in solitary confinement for three years in the US base in Cuba, and released detainee Jamal al-Harith, Ms Redgrave lambasted the media for allegedly downplaying the plight of the captives in Guantánamo, criticising the media for using the term "detainee" rather than "prisoners" and "ill-treatment" rather than "torture".

Her case was backed by another speaker, LSE professor of international law Conor Gearty, who said "Language is important - it is being used to split opposition [to Guantánamo] by calling torture 'controlled mistreatment'."

Vanessa Redgrave also claimed that the British government was covering up the number of detainees being held around the world in the "war against terror".

Wednesday, 22 September 2004

brain regions linked to fear responses are also highly activated when fears are unlearned

Studies on a variety of animals such as monkeys, cats and rodents have revealed that the amygdala is involved in fear. Electrical stimulation of the amygdala, for example, can cause an animal to display fearful or aggressive behaviors.

Recent research on humans has revealed that the amygdala is a key area involved in fear conditioning - learning to fear something because it occurred with aversive consequences.

"Understanding how fears are acquired is an important step in our ability to translate basic research to the treatment of fear-related disorders," say the researchers. "Understanding how learned fears are diminished may be even more valuable."

First the researchers identified the neural signals rats generate when they have found a scent that they are looking for. “When a dog is sniffing a bomb, he makes a unique movement that the handler recognises,” says John Chapin, a neuroscientist at the State University of New York in Brooklyn who is collaborating on the project. “Instead of the rat making a conditioned response, we pick up the response immediately from the brain.”

Each rat has electrodes implanted in three areas of the brain: the olfactory cortex, where the brain processes odour signals; the motor cortex, where the brain plans its next move; and the reward centre, which when stimulated gives the rat a pleasurable sensation.

The researchers trained the rats to search for human odour by stimulating the reward centre when it found its target smell. Once the rats were trained, they were set to forage for the target smell, while electrodes recorded their neural activity patterns.

Hundreds of Iranian online journals have been protesting against media censorship by renaming their websites after pro-reformist newspapers and websites that have been banned or shut down by the authorities.

Many of the weblogs have also posted news items from the banned publications on their websites.

blogger Hossein Derakhshan, a student at Toronto university in Canada told the BBC that although he felt the action was symbolic, he wanted to show Iranian authorities "that they would not be able to censor the internet in the same way as they have managed to control other media".

stop.censoring.usThe purpose of stop.censoring.us is to provide official and unofficial accounts on Internet censorship in Iran so that International observers and activists have a beter picture about the situation of freedom of information in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

A new group aims to expose how billions of pounds which should be funding development is being hidden offshore

Billions of pounds, enough to pay for the entire primary health and education needs of the world's developing countries, are being siphoned off through offshore companies and tax havens, according to a body formed to expose the offenders.
(via what really happened)

On 31 August 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York City, around 1,200 people were arrested and sent to a makeshift detention/processing center, which used to house city buses, at Pier 57.

"I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain."

Tuesday, 21 September 2004

The Phooka is a harmless Irish kobold who appears in a great diversity of animal shapes. His Nordic name is Kornbock and the Welsh call him Bookha.

he is a shapeshifter. He can be seen in the shape of a dog or horse, usually pitch-black with fiery eyes. They are pranksters like most goblins and appear to weary travelers as docile ponies. the Phooka offers the careless traveler a ride on its back. But as soon as the traveler mounts the horse, he is in for a hell-ride through marshes and thorn-bushes. Then suddenly, he is thrown into a ditch or mudpool and the chuckling he hears is the Phooka galloping away.

Sometimes he appears in the form of an eagle and carries people away on his back.

Thousands of tonnes of 'e-waste', some of it highly toxic, is being sent illegally from Britain to Africa and Asia

The government's pollution watchdog, the Environment Agency, says the e-waste exports are worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Last year such waste involved tens of thousands of old computers, 500,000 television sets, 3m refrigerators, 160,000 tonnes of electrical equipment and millions of discarded mobile phones, all sent to the poorest countries in the world.

But the agency admits it has no idea how much of the waste is being deliberately dumped on poor countries by companies trying to avoid paying increasingly high disposal costs in the UK, and how much is only technically illegal because companies have filled in the forms incorrectly.

Impel's ongoing study of six major European ports, including Felixstowe, has found that 22% of all the waste exports checked for more than a year were illegal. Enforcement agencies in the Netherlands, Germany, Britain, Poland and elsewhere found large quantities of computer equipment, electrical cable, cathode ray tubes, single-use cameras, old tyres, and oil and contaminated motor parts being exported.

A major investigation by an international coalition of environmental groups earlier this year found huge quantities of e-waste being exported to China, Pakistan and India, where it was being reprocessed in operations extremely harmful to both human health and the environment.

"We found a cyber-age nightmare," said Jim Puckett of Ban. "They call this recycling, but it's really dumping by another name. Yet to our horror, we discovered that rather than banning it, governments are actually encouraging this ugly trade in order to avoid finding real solutions to the massive tide of obsolete computer waste generated."

they identified a town called Guiyu, some 200 miles north-east of Hong Kong in the coastal province of Guangdong, where up to 100,000 migrant labourers break up and reprocess obsolete computers from around the world.

The work involves men, women and children unaware of the health and environmental hazards of dismantling such goods - processes that include the open burning of plastics and wires, acid used to extract gold, the melting and burning of toxic soldered circuit boards and the cracking and dumping of toxic lead-laden cathode ray tubes.

Already Guiyu has become so polluted that well water is undrinkable and water has to be trucked in for the entire population, the report said.

a site which starts with the owner's list of the 12 most evil and the 12 most good people in history. Certainly his choices are highly debatable, and he is then decent enough to print thousands of responses and a giant debate/discussion ensues..

Monday, 20 September 2004

Small humanoid beings from Philippine folklore. They have long beards and nails and live in groups near anthills or thickets. Their homes are said to contain treasures. The kama-kama are very strong and have squeaky voices, and come out of hiding just after sunset. When they are harmed or angered, they will pinch the offenders, who will then start develop red or black spots on their bodies where they were pinched.

A new sign language created over the last 30 years by deaf children in Nicaragua gives a unique insight into how languages evolve.

"This is the first time we have had the opportunity to observe it in action because the originators are still alive."

Before the 1970s, most deaf people in Nicaragua stayed at home and had little contact with one another, according to Dr Senghas.

Then, in 1981, a vocational school opened, and the children began to communicate with each other. No one actually taught them to sign, but they began to develop a system of gestures to get their messages across.

when a new wave of children learned the gestures they turned them into a sophisticated sign language, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)...

"Truck drivers across the US will soon be keeping their eyes peeled for more than just the right exit sign: They'll be looking for signs of terrorism which they can report to Homeland Security officials through a national hotline, thanks to a $21 million dollar federal grant announced on Tuesday....."

Saturday, 18 September 2004

At the heart of the device is a protein complex dubbed Photosystem I (PSI). Derived from spinach chloroplasts, PSI is 10 to 20 nanometers wide. Around 100,000 of them would fit on the head of a pin. “They are the smallest electronic circuits I know of,” said researcher Marc A. Baldo, assistant professor of electronic engineering and computer science at MIT.

on itv's "the x factor" they just broadcast a segment on the judges where they'd digitised over simon cowell's cigarette. i mean its absurd enough that our human sexual and excretory organs get the masked over treatment on tv (or that janet jackson's nipple can blow america's tiny mind), but since when has it been deemed "nescessary" to obscure cigarettes from sight?

John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff of the the New York Times, called by his peers, "The Dean of His Profession," was asked in 1953 to give a toast before the NY Press Club; and this is what he said....

"There is no such thing at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

There is not one of you that dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

I am paid weekly for keeping my opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of journalists is to destroy truth; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

We are tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

"If the public knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But they don't know and they can't know."- 1914, Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, to Manchester Guardian editor C.P. Scott, As quoted by Philip Knightly in his book 'The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam - Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth-maker'

The Pentagon recently justified its' position on censorship by insisting: "If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war."- from 'Military Blunders' – article by Geoffrey Regan in 'Night and Day' (Mail on Sunday supplement) 23rd January 2000

Arguments that "pure" news cannot be propaganda are untenable. Propaganda is most effective when it is unrecognised, and when people come across a factual, informative statement they are off guard and believe it cannot be propaganda. And if they can be made to think that the views they hold are their own, arrived at without outside interference, so much the better.

best summed up by the Nazi propagandist, Goebbels, when he said: "We do not talk to say something, but to obtain a certain effect".(Why you can't read all about it by Brian Whitaker)

RSF says that "arrests of journalists and censorship of media reached a record high in 2003," and that this is "undoubtedly linked to the fight against terrorism and to anti-terror laws adopted by some countries since the 11 September attacks".

"Until you know who has lent what to whom, you know nothing whatever of politics, you know nothing whatever of history, you know nothing of international wrangles." ...Ezra Pound Expatriate American poet, writer 1885-1972, speaking of the destructive effects of parasitical banking, or usury, on national and international politics

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." ....President Theodore Roosevelt 1906

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." ...President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter written to Colonel House November 21, l933

"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that The State has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." ...Arthur Miller

GOVERNMENTS ACROSS the globe, including the United States, are using the worldwide war against terrorism as an excuse for controlling the press, in some cases denying access to information, Jim Ottaway Jr., Chairman of the World Press Freedom charged.

"The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that 'everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, and regardless of frontiers' ? there is evidence that this is now under threat."
(reported May 3, 2003)

Wednesday, 15 September 2004

Lamiñas are evil faeries of the País Vasco. They live in the woods and in the shores of streams and rivers. They usually appear as women (they can also appear as men, but that is rare). The only means to distinguish them from normal people is to see that part of their body which is fish or bird. Of course, usually it is easy beacuase it is fifty-fifty, but the animal detail can sometimes be as small as a goat leg or a chicken foot.

homophobia in Jamaica goes far beyond songs lyrics, with gay men and women "beaten, cut, burned, raped and shot on account of their sexuality", according to Amnesty International.

"We have talked to people who have been forced to leave their communities after being publicly vilified, threatened or attacked on suspicion of being gay. They face homelessness, isolation or worse," says Lesley Warner, Amnesty International UK media director.

The country's law makes any act of physical intimacy between men punishable by jail, with the possibility of 10-years hard labour.

Reporting abuse and harassment to the police is not an option for many as officers are frequently known to standby or even join in attacks, says Amnesty.

The church has traditionally been a major force in Jamaican society and plays a significant part in people's daily lives. Many preachers use the Bible to support homophobic sentiments. Another major influence in people's lives is dancehall music steeped in homophobia, with lyrics from Buju Banton's Boom Boom Bye Bye, threatening gay men with a "gunshot in ah head" and Beenie Man's stating "I'm a dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays".

Top officials of the Food and Drug Administration acknowledged for the first time on Monday that antidepressants appeared to lead some children and teenagers to become suicidal.

The acknowledgement comes a year after the agency suppressed the conclusions of its own drug-safety analyst, Dr. Andrew Mosholder, who first found a link between the drugs and suicide in teenagers and children. Agency officials wrote in internal memorandums that Dr. Mosholder's analysis was unreliable, and they hired researchers at Columbia University to re-analyze the same data. That study recently reached conclusions nearly identical to Dr. Mosholder's.

The most popular pills are Zoloft, made by Pfizer; Paxil, made by GlaxoSmithKline; and Prozac, made by Eli Lilly & Company. In 2002, nearly 11 million children and teenagers were prescribed antidepressants.

Woven into the pillows are electroluminescent fibres. When one pillow is hugged or squeezed, its partner pillow lights up.

and a former MIT students called Angela Chang worked on a smart photo frame, called Lumi-Touch that noticed when a person looked at it and made a corresponding frame light up.

though of course a husband and wife using it to see when their spouse glances at their image could get paranoid about the way their partner feels if the number of glances drops off significantly over a period of days.

"You always have to be able to turn it off," What is important to these projects, and any other that helps people communicate how they feel about each other, is control. Without the ability to decide when and what you want to communicate the opportunity to show how you feel using technology can become oppressive, says Margot Jacobs, an interaction design researcher at the Play Studio.

Prof Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab, is also working on ways to make machines notice how we are feeling and thinks the trend toward making computers more cognisant of how humans feel is inevitable.

Smarter systems at work could notice when people are stressed and have a lot to do and manage the amount of interruptions they get via e-mails or phone to let them get on with their work.

Another system could spot whether customers ringing a call centre are angry to ensure the difficult calls are spread among staff rather than just routed to one person.

plus...

Students make washing machine talkEngineering students at an American university have modified a washing machine to make it more accessible to people with visual impairments by giving it a voice.